It begins in the small Gujarat village of Idar in the 1950s. A young lad called Gurukant Desai (fondly known as Guru) faces the ire of his headmaster father for dreaming big. Yet he succeeds somehow in convincing his father for traveling abroad to Istanbul, where he works in an oil company. The praise and the promotion for his hard work prompts him to return home and invest in his own ‘bijness’ of textile. Upon reaching the dream city of Mumbai with his wife Sujata (Aishwarya Rai) and brother-in-law ‘Jignes’ (Aryan Babbar), he realizes that the textile market has been monopolized by individuals and takes up the fight to free the same from their clutches with the help of a Gandhian philosopher called Nanaji (Mithun Chakraborty) who runs a newspaper called ‘The Independent’. Guru’s labour of love starts bearing fruit and his textile trade expands by leaps and bounds; he decides to build a manufacturing unit of polyester yarn in his home town of Idar. His oratory skills coupled with his intelligence leaves the crowd spellbound at a shareholders meet where he assures them that Shakti Corporation is a big family itself. However the trail of his accomplishment gets smudgy and he takes the ultimate test of his character to clear his name in front of an inquiry commission in a case of misappropriation of funds and custom duties.
The film clearly rests upon the acting brilliance of Abhishek Bachchan. Three cheers to the man who we can proudly say has now matured as an actor from the days when he was written off as just another star son (remember him in Shararat, Dhai Akshar Prem Ke, Bas Itna Sa Khwab Hai?). With Guru, Abhishek has taken his acting to the next level. Especially noteworthy are the sequences of the old Gurukant paralyzed from the right side with his detractors are baying down his neck or the speech which he gives in the heavy rain in front of an angry crowd (the Bombay High court is clearly visible in the background – it’s Cross Maidan).
After successive partnerships in films like Roja (1992), Thiruda Thiruda (1993), Bombay (1995), Iruvar (1997), Dil Se..(1998), Alai Payuthey (2000), Yuva (2004), etc. the Ratnam-Rahman duo have done it once again with Guru. Songs like Barso Re (Shreya Ghoshal) and Mayya Mayya (Mayyam Toller was especially roped in for this song) have been mixed with some Gujarati folk music making them irresistible while others like Aye Hairathe (Hariharan and Alka Yagnik) and Tere Bina (A R Rahman, Chinmayee & Murtaza Qadir) are more sufi based songs. The picturization and the choreography sets each song apart from the rest. Also blessed is the art direction where an entire street of the 50’s Mumbai complete with trams has been recreated for the movie. In my opinion, Guru is clearly Mani Ratnam’s best attempt at making cinema till now.
The Dhirubhai Ambani Connection
The media was speculative about Ratnam portraying Dhirubhai Hirachand Ambani’s (founder of Reliance Industries Limited) story cinematically. Dhirubhai like Gurukant Desai in the movie, also made it big in the corporate world from a modest beginning just by his sheer courage and intelligence. There are a couple of parallel instances which makes one wonder if the movie is indeed inspired by the business tycoon’s own story – Guru’s father being a teacher in a small village in Gujarat (Dhirubhai’s father himself was a teacher in Chorwad in Gujarat), the protagonist going abroad to work with an oil distributor (Dhirubhai worked in Aden, Yemen at a distributor of Shell Oil; in the movie you can see the young Guru sitting on cans of Shell Oil at the back of a truck), Guru setting up the textile business first and then moving into petrochemicals (Dhirubhai started the brand Vimal, a polyester yarn manufacturing company and then diversified into petrochemicals), the shareholder’s meeting in a pandal and the the one in Cross Maidan as mentioned earlier (Reliance Indistries has the rare distinction of being the only company to hold annual general meetings in stadiums. In 1986 it was held at Cross Maidan which was attended by 30,000 people), the paralysis attack on the right side (Dhirubhai had a brain stroke in 1986 which left his right arm paralyzed). Also similar to the movie, the Reserve Bank of India had indeed inquired into the NRI investments and their subsequent routing into Reliance Industries through lesser known companies registered abroad. They found nothing unethical or illegal. You can read more in this article here.
In my opinion the ending was an unconvincing attempt to make him look like a one man’s struggle for the nation (he taked about ghandi in that speech!)
It was very difficult to digest that he did everything for the public (shareholders). He was a crooked businessman who broke the law and its as simple as that, this movie isn’t about judging the characters because thats not what we see here, he makes himself out to be some kinda hero. He’s a crook and we should have left it at that in my book.
Thanks for your comments Sangeeta. To begin with, the whole point of making the movie was to showcase a common man’s strength to win against all odds. The movie producers never proclaimed ‘Guru’ to be a biographical movie. Hence despite the ‘uncanny’ resemblances in the movie, we should look at Gurukant Desai in it’s totality and not relate it to any real life character and spoil the fun.
That’s slightly difficult to do when Mani is known for his realism.
Overall the film was really good enough, it really inspires a young entrepreneur to work for themself and to keep trying untill they succeed.
What I felt funny was that last sequence of the movie, Abhishek totally tried acting like his dad and couple of dialogues were look like picked up from Agnipath and Amar Akabar Anthony.